U-T San Diego launches redesigned site

U-T San Diego unveiled a redesigned and reorganized website Tuesday to better showcase the content of San Diego’s dominant news source.

As with many long-established news sites, the 18-year-old site formerly known as SignOnSanDiego.com reflected the clutter of numerous revisions over the years.

The redesign of UTSanDiego.com, four months in the making, provides a fresh start, with simplified organization, larger images, bolder headlines, improved navigation, color-coded sections and more emphasis on social media and video. It offers more pathways to explore the site, as stories will now be sorted both by topic and geography.

Search functions have been overhauled on the site, as have efforts to be recognized by search engines.

The homepage has been streamlined, with a rotating marquee at the top displaying as many as 10 top stories, photo galleries or videos. A new Editor’s Picks column showcases five of the top items on the site. The homepage also features an expanded photo gallery hub, with each image leading to a different series of photos, and increased integration with U-T TV, the U-T’s broadcast arm.

The redesign was executed by Mindgruve, a San Diego-based digital marketing and technology consulting firm. In keeping with readership trends, its designers paid particular attention to the article, or story, page.

“We know that the article page is the most consumed page on the website, so we focused on its readability, whether it’s the size of the type and the spacing, or making sure it’s easy to read on tablets, and on the desktop web,” said Clint Walden, Mindgruve’s executive creative director. “We tried to make sure there was no dead end on article pages, so that once readers select an article, they can keep going on the topic of their choice.

On the slimmed-down homepage, Mindgruve CEO Chad Robley, “It’s a little counterintuitive, but it helps create a cleaner user path. You don’t have to list everything up front.”

The redesign was largely based on the audience behavior revealed through analytics, which show the paths users take through the site. Robley said reader habits will continue to guide subsequent improvements, noting, “Once you build (a site), you’re not done.”

With the changes, the expanded North County pages of UTSanDiego.com will host the former North County Times site, nctimes.com, and The Californian.

“We rebuilt the site for the entire region, to take the best of the U-T, the North County Times and The Californian and create a stronger site that focuses on local communities,” said Dan Hellbusch, the U-T’s vice president of interactive media, who led the effort.

“The U-T has a larger variety of content than at any point in its history when you factor in U-T TV, video, photos and social media,” said Mike Hodges, the U-T’s president and chief operating officer. “The new UTSanDiego.com is the hub for all of this great content and will carry on the tradition of being San Diego’s homepage.”

UTSanDiego.com, which normally requires registration, will be free for all users for a week to give them time explore the redesigned site.